Bank of America Merrill Lynch's head of EMEA FX has just joined Bluecrest

Since converting to a family office managing the personal wealth of CEO Michael Platt and its partners, Bluecrest Capital Management has been luring some senior traders across from investment banks.

The latest recruit is James Coulton, the former head of EMEA FX trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who joined Bluecrest as a partner. He was hired by the hedge fund earlier this month, according to sources close to the situation, following a four-year stint at BAML.

Coulton moved to BAML from Goldman Sachs in June 2013. He spent 15 years at the bank in various trading roles, most recently as a managing director and head of emerging markets FX.

Bluecrest has been hiring very senior fixed income traders from large investment banks for the past year. In March, it brought in Ron Choy, Credit Suisse’s head of Japanese rates trading and Ashish Saksena, a senior rates trader at Barlcays in Singapore, also joined.

Andrew McDougall, previously head of emerging markets rates trading at Barclays and Dr Jim Hough, the former head of European inflation trading at Royal Bank of Scotland, were also hired by Bluecrest in January.

Coulton’s career path is similar to Christopher Bae, the former global head of fixed income, currencies and commodities electronic trading at BAML who joined Bluecrest in April last year. Bae also worked at Goldman Sachs, where he was a managing director in equity derivatives trading.

In 2015, Bluecrest returned around $7bn to investors in order to focus on managing Platt’s money and that of the firm’s partner and employees. Many senior employees left last year, but more recently headcount has been growing.

It also hired Ralph Courtney, a former prop trader at J.P. Morgan who was most recently a portfolio manager at Visium Asset Management, in March. He joined as a portfolio manager on its fundamental equity and derivatives long short team.